A Settlement Between Enemies
by quaquaquaqua
Summary: Severus Snape has just died. The person who awaits him at Platform Nine and Three Quarters is, of all people, James Potter. It is time for the confrontation that should've taken place decades ago.


Disclaimer: Not mine. JKR's. With references to Beckett's _Waiting for Godot. _Hoping readers can spot them.

Description: Severus Snape has just died. Due to an unfortunate twist of fate, the man who awaits him at Platform Nine and Three Quarters is James Potter. It is time for the confrontation that should've taken place decades ago.

Enjoy.

quaquaquaqua

**~A Settlement Between Enemies~**

Severus opened his eyes.

He blinked, momentarily startled by the amount of light that flooded his vision. The last time he'd opened them, it had been night, darkness and treachery and pain everywhere, a sort of hellish world that gave him no peace and little contentment. As such, he was unready to face the purity that embraced him.

He stood, realising with surprisingly little bashfulness that he was naked. Clothes appeared before him almost as soon as he had pondered over his current state of nudity. A simple pair of muggle shoes, a pair of worn out jeans and a plain, unremarkable shirt. He stiffened. It had been years since he had emerged out of his strict dress code of black robes, but he could remember the outfit before him from anywhere. They were the clothes he'd worn during the last summer of his adolescent years, the last summer he'd spent with Lily.

He frowned, then inspected his body. There was something a little different about him. He seemed younger, more robust and muscular (though he'd never been particularly brawny), and it dawned on him that perhaps he had resumed the shape of his fifteen year old self.

He hastily adorned the clothes.

It came to him moments later that he was alone in an endless space of white. He observed his surroundings cautiously, feeling vulnerable being fifteen and without his wand. Moments later, as with the clothes, a setting appeared. A station, brick walls, seats, a red sign hanging with gold letters.

He was back at Platform Nine and Three Quarters.

Movement sounded behind him. He turned, soon identifying footsteps that gradually approached him. There was a figure, momentarily blurred by the fog of white that wafted the atmosphere. He narrowed his eyes, refusing to believe it until he was sure, absolutely sure.

"I don't understand."

No, it was no mistake. He knew who it was.

"Few do," James Potter answered him gently. "You are dead, Severus. Your time in the physical realm has come to an end, and it is time soon for the next great adventure."

"I realise I have died, Potter," he spat. "Your presence here clearly gave it away."

By all reasons of nature, James Potter should have been riled. The last time the two had met, they had been on opposite sides of the same battle, flinging curses and spells at one another that could have easily resulted in the other's untimely death.

Not that neither of them had ended up dying in that manner anyway.

"Why are you here?"

James' smile, that sad, nostalgic thing that made Snape want to pound him, remained where it was as he answered. "I've been waiting."

"For who - me?"

"No, for Godot. Of course for you, Severus. Been waiting for a while now actually."

Snape's right eye twitched, a horrible habit he'd developed after having Potter (the younger one) under his tutelage for six years. Merlin, they were one and the same. "Only you, Potter? Surely you cannot imagine me to believe that throughout the continuum of space time, the only beings to have perished include me…and you?" He gestured wildly at the emptiness around him. "Where's everyone else? Why're you the only one here? Where's – where's-?"

"Merlin?" Potter's eyes sparkled with familiar mirth. "Perhaps your mother? Or maybe…even Lily?"

Snape's head turned sharply.

"Shut up, Potter," he croaked. "Just shut _up!"_

"Don't be foolish, Severus," Potter, annoying, cruel, spiteful, continued gently. "Those were not the feelings of a trifling man. You care about her greatly, even though it has been so long. Please don't pretend like you didn't mourn her death. Even after all these years, you still…"

"No, _no," _Snape fumed. "You're wrong, Potter. I didn't _care_ for her. Don't talk _care _to me. I _loved _her. I _loved Lily Evans!" _

He paused to regain momentum, lungs huffing from the passionate profession. "I still love her," he vowed. And, just to spite his childhood (and adolescent) enemy, he added snidely, "probably even more than you ever did."

But James Potter, the arrogant bullying toe-rag, the jeering figure that haunted what should have been the best years of his life, only shook his head, as if he was indulging in the mere whims of a child.

"It's time to let go, Severus. It's been only too long. I've grown up. It's time you did the same."

"Stop – mocking – me!" He hissed, decades of hatred and bitterness and remorse flooding back into him. "Don't you dare patronise me, Potter. Fight me, why don't you? Man to man, just as it should have been years ago."

Momentarily blinded by the rage and disorientation of seeing his dead enemy alive, Snape blindly charged at him. The fault, however, lay in that both of them were dead and therefore existed only spiritually. Snape sliced through James Potter's ethereal form effortlessly, feeling nothing but a slight chill as he did so. He turned, expecting to see him still there, as intact as himself after the collision or lack thereof.

Potter had disappeared.

"COWARD!" He bellowed. "You – bloody – coward!"

He paced the platform, fuming as he searched. James Potter was well and truly gone. And yet again, he'd walked away without giving Snape the last word.

"Stop – pretending!" he continued, voice echoing down the continuum of the platform as he shouted. "Bloody – stop –showing – me – mercy!"

"And why not, Severus?"

Snape whirled round, ears ringing with disbelief.

There Potter sat, comfortable as ever with a copy of the _Daily Prophet _open as he waited patiently for Snape's answer.

"Is it wrong to wish for our feud to end?"

"I hate you," Snape said bluntly and remorselessly. "You hate me. That's how things between us have always been, or have you forgotten whose fault it was that you and she are dead?"

"Voldemort's," Potter answered instantly, "and to a greater extent, Peter Pettigrew's. Truthfully, I never resented you for telling your master, Severus. You were not my friend and you owed me no allegiance. You didn't even know who it was the prophecy referred to."

"And it doesn't irk you to know that had it been any other woman but Lily Potter affected, I would have shown _no _remorse for her death, _no _inclination to change my loyalties, not a single attempt to be what you seem to believe I am – _good?"_

James Potter just stared at him.

"Everything that I have done for the past sixteen years was for her. Everything. So don't speak to me about having a conscience or any sense of moral direction when the only thing that drove me to your side of the war was her."

"Bullshit."

Snape blinked, the anger that had seeped into Potter's voice for the first time pushing him off-balance for a moment.

"What?"

"I said bullshit, Snape. Or are you deaf on top of being too stubborn for your own good?" The paper laid discarded now, its bold headline proudly proclaiming Harry Potter's victory capturing Snape's eye for a brief instant. So the boy wins, it seemed. Good. Good for him.

"Listen to me, Severus Snape," Potter continued mercilessly. "You're telling me Lily was wrong when she saw something in you that made her your closest friend for all those years? You're telling me there's nothing good of you apart from her?"

"Yes," Snape snarled, angry, so angry that Potter just wouldn't give up and write him off, not like every other person in his life, "that is _exactly _what I'm saying. Don't you glorify me just because I helped your side, Potter. Don't you dare think I changed after she died. You think I underwent some sort of personal reform, do you? That I became a new person, told myself to start afresh and gave up the Dark Arts in her image? I'm _not _a hero, Potter. That's your dunderhead of a son's job. I'm _not _good. I am not _any _of the things you Gryffindors seem so keen on painting me out to be. _She _believed there was something in me she could salvage, _Dumbledore _foolishly believed a person's nature could always repent and change, and now you, _you of all people, _dare to tell me that I am _good?"_

Snape trembled with anger. He was furious, he was _livid. _"You – have – no – right!"

But James merely watched him in silence, an intensity in his eyes that betrayed nothing. He was silent as stared and Snape filled the emptiness with his heavy breathing.

"Let me tell you where we are, Severus," James finally spoke when Snape seemed calm enough. "We are at the meeting point between life and death. This is where all souls whose physical bodies perish will and must find themselves before they leave for the next stage of their journey. Death, that is."

"And what are _you_ doing here, Potter?" Snape asked coldly. "You died long ago."

James shrugged. "Train's coming. It's running a little late but the two of us will need to get on sooner or later. But I digress – This is the place of souls, no longer the physical realm you have so far known. Here, you are stripped of everything except for the essence of your soul. You may have realised that you are much…younger than the man you were before you died."

Snape scoffed. "The thought might have somewhat passed my mind."

"It is because your soul has not aged a single day from the time you were fifteen." James smiled softly into the distant. "It was Lily who nurtured that soul Severus, and when she left your life, your soul stopped growing."

Snape sneered, heart too pained at the sound of her name to bother with comprehending just what Potter was saying. "Get to the point, Potter."

James sighed. "Don't you understand, Severus? It stopped growing but _it never withered._ You were, deep inside, still the same boy you were at fifteen. You were bitter, you became easily jealous, you held your bias and prejudice before all other moral principles, but you never declined, you never became less of the man she saw in you.

"I said before that in this space, you become your essence," he continued. "Every other part of you is left behind in the physical realm, stripped away, every part of you that failed to tarnish your soul."

Snape stared. Comprehension was finally dawning on him. Something was finally making sense.

"I want you to take a look at your left arm, Severus."

Of course. How could he have forgotten? The mark that had tainted his body and his mind for so long, the painful reminder of what he had earned at the expense of so much, of _everything._

But when he lifted up the sleeve that slightly drooped on his wiry frame, his hand trembling as he took in all that James Potter had said, he could find nothing.

His arm was bare.

"Now tell me," James continued, voice trembling with conviction, "now tell me that you are not good. Tell me that you cannot move on beyond the errors of your past. Tell me now that you can't change, that you'll always be a Death Eater wherever you go, whatever you do, whichever life you lead. Go on, _tell me."_

And Snape, for once in his life, fell totally and utterly silent. Something had changed in the air, something had shifted. He dropped down on the seat beside James, his right hand clutching his left forearm, mind in brief stupor.

"You think you can never shake off the taint you've carried? You think you can never shake away the guilt? I'm showing you the proof that you're _wrong_, Severus Snape."

There came a moment of silence. James shifted slightly to turn towards him, reached out a hand and placed it gently but firmly on top of Severus's.

"It's time to let go. It's time to move on."

And finally, _finally, _Snape turned and found the courage to look James Potter in the eye.

"I…I'm…"

He couldn't continue; a lump of something bitter, something sad had found its way into the back of Snape's throat. He swallowed, then tried again.

"I'm…_sorry _Potter. You have no idea how much I wished-"

James, out of pity or perhaps mercy, stopped him before he could finish. "Just as I am also sorry to you, old boy. I believe we both made foolish errors as children."

"I killed you," Snape croaked. "I _killed _you, James Potter. You ridiculed me and tormented me but you never-"

"But I never showed the same remorse that you did after your actions, Snape. Only perhaps too late." James patted his hand. "I used to think I was the one who drove you into becoming a Death Eater."

Severus shrugged. "Partly, yes. The desire to best you in _something _never went away and I wanted the power, the glory, _anything_ to show you and the rest of the world that I was better than what you made me out to be. But you weren't the only driving force, Potter. I'd grown up resenting muggles, wanting the glory of being worshipped for my name. You were never the _only-"_

"Then we're even." James shook his head, stopping whatever retort Snape had. "We're even, Snape. You played a small part in my death, I played a small part in you being a Death Eater. Let's end the rivalry once and for all and put our quarrels behind us now." He extended a hand. "Shake on it?"

Severus stared for a moment. All that such a simple gesture represented wasn't lost on him.

"I never thought the day would come," he said.

Then, two enemies, two sworn enemies, placed aside their hatred and made peace, their handshake one final gesture of friendship and forgiveness in death. There was a brilliance in age – the problems that once seemed to great, so indomitable, became nothing but unremarkable pebbles, petty things that didn't deserve years of hatred. Or perhaps it was death that got you these things.

"Often I wondered if the first Wizarding war would have come about had Gryffindors and Slytherins been able to set aside their differences."

"A tall order," James snorted. "We were very different people, almost like black and white, except neither side could really call themselves good or evil. We would have never worked out…"

"I disagree, Potter," Snape found himself interrupting. "If only we could live for another decade. Ripples are forming in the Wizarding world as we speak, changes are being made. The children of this generation, they do not disappoint. We left the world in good hands."

James cleared his throat, somewhat nervous. "How's…" He paused for a moment, but Severus already knew what he would say. "How's Harry?"

Snape allowed himself a half-smile, wishing so, so much that the brave man who fathered a brave son had lived to see his child.

"Your son…" He swallowed. "He's a good man. Your son is a good man."

James nodded. "Good," he said quietly, satisfied by the simple reply, "good. Thank you, Severus. It would have been difficult, knowing he was my son."

"And hers. Every time I looked at him, and I tried not to, every time I looked into his eyes…"

James' eyes found him. "Sometimes I wonder what it might have been like, had it been _you _she chose."

Ten minutes ago, he would have basked in the triumph of Potter finally seeing him as an equal, someone just as worthy of being in his position, being with _her _as he was.

But now, his heart only felt resolve.

"It would never have worked, Potter. She never saw me that way, not how she saw you. Even when she hated you, even when you were the most annoying little boy alive, a part of her still loved you. It was always you."

James patted him again, eyes unusually shiny. Severus briefly wondered if spirits could cry. "Thank you, Severus. Thank you."

They could have gone on forever, all day long, setting aside their problems, but it was enough – Two heavy hearts had settled. In the distant, Severus could make out the vague sound of an approaching train, racketing across the tracks towards them. The white fog of their ethereal realm parted, revealing the red paint of the Hogwarts Express.

"James."

James turned with surprise at the sound of his name.

"Severus."

It was time, finally time for Severus to get in the last word, the moment he had dreamed of, at times feverishly, other times nostalgically. This was the moment he had pined for for decades, only to get it in death.

"I...I..."

There were a million things he'd imagined himself saying when he finally met James Potter again. And yet, when the moment came, when his moment had finally come, there was nothing to say. Absolutely nothing.

He shook his head. "Time to get on, my friend."

It was weird how these things happened, Snape thought. You wasted and pined for something that haunted your conscience for years, but when the moment came, if it ever did, there was...nothing. Or simply very little of something. Strange, Snape mused. Not disappointing though, not when he'd spent all his life without it.

He sighed resignedly. The train patiently awaited for its second and last passenger to board before taking off. Severus turned round for one last look; the mist had settled a little. Above him in the whiteness, the beam of a sun seemed to shine.


End file.
